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The best ever

• A star rises from the streets of Albany to national prominence.

Paul Dehner Jr.

On bent rims with tattered nets, on a court with cracked concrete and overhanging tree limbs, Dontonio Wingfield learned the game the hard way: playing his brother Banastreus in one-on-one games.

Their no-blood, no-foul matches developed Dontonio Wingfield into a 6-foot-9 intimidator, a man-child who, while playing for Westover High School, become the leading scorer and rebounder in the history of Dougherty County, a basketball player whom many people would anoint as the best high school talent in the history of Georgia.

But on his rise to greatness, Dontonio Wingfield never beat his brother one-on-one. Ever.

In his defense, few games ever ended with a final point.

“Because before we would finish,” he says now, “I would try to fight him. As soon as he started beating me, I would fight him.”

Theirs was more than sibling rivalry, though. For Dontonio Wingfield, the son of parents who divorced when he was in the fourth grade and of a father who battled alcoholism, he might as well have been playing a game of life in which no fouls were called. You either fought back hard or the game broke you down.

Wingfield made his choice.

“I was a fighter,” he says. “I grew up fighting. All my life. I just grew up around that type of atmosphere.”

He found no escape from it — not on the cracked concrete or even in a more organized environment, where he found himself playing in front of standing-room-only crowds when he was a nervous, angry 15-year-old freshman.

He’d fly up and down the court, dominating players three and four years his elder. His remarkable skill turned him into perhaps the most high-profile athlete ever to call Albany home. It also put Wingfield under the spotlight.

It was a spotlight he was ill-prepared for.

Wingfield began his career at Westover by slugging a teammate during their first week of practice. He ended his career there by snapping in front of a sold-out Civic Center. In the state semifinals, he collected two technicals and was suspended for what would have been his final game in Albany.

In between came 2,004 points, only nine losses and four consecutive state championships.

Off the court came a steady diet of incidents that sullied his reputation.

He fathered three children with two different women before he left high school. He was academically ineligible the first half of his senior season. He left Westover immediately after his final basketball season and transferred to Taft High in Cincinnati in hopes of qualifying to play at the University of Cincinnati.

Those were his major problems. Smaller issues followed him around school, whether it was arguments with teachers or fist fights in the hallways.

“There aren’t a lot of major incidents,” said former teacher Carlton Fletcher, an assistant coach under longtime Westover coach Willie Boston. “He was just constantly in trouble; they all kept running together. He would keep getting bailed out or Boston would smooth things over. Boston would keep him in line.”

And for good reason, too. Boston had a player in Wingfield who was unstoppable on the basketball court.

On teams that combined to send 18 players to Division I college basketball — including Antonio Smith, who played professionally in Sweden, and Lavar Postell, who played for the New York Knicks — Wingfield separated himself.

“There were so many games that Don just completely took over,” Fletcher said. “All four of the teams that he played on were incredible teams, so it was never a one-man show. But if we got in a spot where things got tight and we had to have a basket, he became a beast.”

By the time Wingfield reached his sophomore season, he held one state championship and fans came out in bunches. They not only came to witness the prodigy with power in the post and precision on the perimeter. They came to star gaze.

Bobby Cremins. Bob Huggins. Jim Boeheim. The sidelines more resembled a Division I hoops summit than high school game.

“The elite of the elite,” Fletcher said.

On most nights, they got their money’s worth.

That sophomore season he met Southside senior and future Georgia Tech standout James Forrest in the state title game.

In a sold-out Albany Civic Center, Wingfield electrified the crowd with 27 points to outduel Forrest, the future two-time honorable mention All-American.

“Forrest hung 50-some on Dougherty the night before,” said current Westover coach Dallis Smith. “Dontonio took him inside and out. He was one of the greatest basketball players I’d ever seen.”

After a junior season in which Wingfield again led the team in scoring en route to a third consecutive state championship, he seemed destined for a speedy trek to the NBA.

After most games he squinted at the bright lights of television cameras and spoke quietly into a bevy of microphones. With much of his troubled life an open book to the public and growing media following him, he said little.

The attention chipped away at his sanity.

“I had to grow up fast in a lot of people’s eyes,” he says. “I couldn’t do things, like make a mistake a regular kid would make. If I make a mistake, it will be in the newspaper. It kind of made me not want to deal with a lot of people and do a lot of talking.

“I was a child. But for some reason people didn’t look at me as a child.”

Throughout a senior season in which he would commit to the University of Cincinnati and lead Westover to one final state title, Wingfield felt mistreated and misunderstood.

“Don was moody at times — I’m sure personal things ate at him a lot — but most of the time he was fun-loving and just great to be around,” Fletcher says. “The other kids loved him; I don’t think there was ever jealousy over the fact that he got the lion’s share of the attention on such good teams.”

Wingfield polarized Albany. Some friends were genuine but many others latched on in hopes of following him to the bank. Still, he and his family heard whispers of a community judging.

“People here perceived Dontonio the wrong way,” his mother, Gloria, says. “People around me always spoke about him and didn’t even know I was his mother. It was crazy.

“I would say, ‘Do you know him personally?’ They’d say they knew just what they saw on news, TV, this and that. I said, ‘OK, let me tell you, I am Ms. Wingfield, Dontonio’s mother. You need any information, you talk to me, I can tell you better than anyone.’”

Ducking out of the city’s watchful eye, he transferred after the season to Taft High in Cincinnati. Wingfield thrived with a change of scenery.

His grades and ACT scores rose enough to qualify to play for the Bearcats.

He turned in 13 points and 13 rebounds playing alongside eventual college and pro stars Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace in the McDonald’s All- American Game.

Yet with the same smooth misdirection of his crossover dribble, Wingfield ushered controversy back into his life.

One week before leaving Albany to start his college classes at UC, he ripped shelves of plates and glasses off the wall and tore through his mother’s kitchen during an argument. According to reports, after his mother called police it took four officers to subdue him as he was arrested and charged with two counts of obstructing an officer and one of criminal trespass.

Seven days in jail, one year probation and 50 community service hours followed.

“I’ve had normal kid problems,” Wingfield said. “But I had just won four state championships. I could never be normal again around here.”

Still, with endless potential and a fresh start at Cincinnati, his path to success appeared to be clear of roadblocks.

In his debut with the Bearcats, he broke Oscar Robertson’s freshman scoring record, pouring in 30 points and 12 rebounds against Butler.

He was named Great Midwest Conference Newcomer of the Year, averaging 16 points and nine rebounds a game while Cincinnati was bounced in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Now under the wing of a father-figure coach in Huggins and content in his new home, Wingfield seemingly weathered the storm of his troubled youth.

But, as everyone would soon find out, the biggest fights in Wingfield’s life were still to come.

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